Testing Different Types of Genotype-Environment Correlation: An Extended Children-of-Twins Model

This study presents an extended children-of-twins model, which allowed the authors to test the direction of the association between parenting and child adjustment. Three mechanisms were examined: direct phenotypic influence of parenting on child behavior (controlling for both parental and child genotype), passive genotype-environment correlation, and evocative genotype-environment correlation. This model was tested with Monte Carlo simulations. The authors generated data sets consisting of 1,000 twin parent pairs together with their children and 1,000 twin children pairs together with their parents. These simulated data sets were then used to estimate the model, and the procedure was repeated 1,000 times. The simulation results showed that this model recovered the true values of parameters with high precision. The model was also applied to an observed data set to analyze, as a first example, the association between maternal emotional overinvolvement and child internalizing problems. The results showed that this association was best explained by evocative genotype-environment correlation.